When undrafted free agent Michael Ajayi first joined the Charlotte Hornets, he told Charles Lee something the head coach had been anxiously waiting to hear.

The Hornets’ longest-tenured player had taken it upon himself to reach out to Ajayi. The newcomer felt welcomed and inspired, and he began taking note of how his older teammate approached each workout and practice.

But Ajayi’s mentor is not some grizzled veteran. In fact, he has exactly zero NBA All-Star selections and not a lick of playoff experience. Instead, he is a 23-year-old by the name of Brandon Miller.

Entering his fourth season with Charlotte, the forward who played one season of college basketball at Alabama is still younger than many of the first-year banking analysts that swarm South End.

But with Charlotte having traded LaMelo Ball and Miles Bridges this offseason, Miller has been around the Hornets organization longer than any player currently in the building. On Monday, he signed a five-year, $209 million contract extension.

“It’s a little weird sometimes,” Miller said. “Being 23 as one of the main leaders of an NBA organization. I think that’s some big shoes to fill for a regular 23-year-old, but I think I’m prepared.”

It’s even crazier when one considers that the Ball-Bridges duo departed with a combined 14 seasons of Hornets-specific experience. The current roster, by comparison, has just 16 — and that’s counting partial seasons as full ones. Of the expected starters, that total drops to just seven.

The result is a Hornets team that looks drastically different from that of last season, and one that has had to build its team chemistry practically from scratch.

But with so many players choosing to stay in Charlotte this summer and physicality serving as a guiding principle, the franchise believes it has something worthwhile.

“After that trade, a lot of people have been not as excited,” Moussa Diabaté, who is entering his third season with Charlotte, said. “But I think that people will be surprised for sure. There’s something that’s building up right now that is very exciting and very promising.”

It will help that the Hornets are building their identity atop a fresh foundation of veteran talent. Of the eight Hornets who are entering their first season with Charlotte, four are rookies.

The other four bring something only two other current Hornets have: NBA playoff experience.

Naz Reid, Royce O’Neale, Grayson Allen, and Dennis Schröder combine for 219 games of playoff experience, more than tripling the 66 games that Grant Williams and Coby White contribute.

“That gives us an advantage because they know where we want to be,” Miller said. “They’ve been before. They’ve been in that environment where you can’t really hear yourself talk or think, and they know that we want to be in that position.”

That’s not to say that having entirely new veterans, and two new starters, has not been an adjustment.

“When we went to training camp, I’m looking around like, ‘Man, this is gonna be the first training camp without Melo or Miles,’” Miller said. “I guess it’s just something new to get used to.”

Experience, of course, does not automatically translate into leadership. While Lee says the new veterans have already begun leading, Miller serves as a primary bridge between newcomers and the organization.

That, Lee thinks, is something Miller is skilled at.

As a consistent starter, Miller has always had the respect of his teammates. But his head coach says he has continued to develop as a leader over his three years in Charlotte, and that his vocal leadership has increased in this offseason alone.

“There’s been moments where maybe he was hesitant to speak up on something, where now he’s more convicted, more assertive,” Lee said.

When Miller was a 20-year-old rookie, he looked to LaMelo Ball, then 23, as his “vet.” Now 23 himself, Miller has two 20-year-old rookies, Hannes Steinbach and Christian Anderson, looking up to him. But Lee says Miller is personalizing his role.

“He understands that leadership is going to look different for every person, and he doesn’t need to do it how anybody else did it,” Lee said. “He’s creating his own type of leadership style. And I think it’s been comfortable for him to do it in that way.”

Still, there are certain methods that Lee does appreciate, like when existing Hornets seek out newcomers. He wants rookies and incoming veterans to understand how things are done as a Hornet.

More importantly, he wants them to feel welcome, just as the rookie guard Ajayi did.

It once seemed comical that rookie Brandon Miller looked up to Ball as his veteran mentor. Now, thanks to a strange series of circumstances, younger players are looking to Miller in much the same way.

And in Charlotte, in this particular season, it is not so absurd.